You emptied the top rack of the dishwasher but not the bottom, so the clean dishes have gotten all mixed up with the dirty ones - and now you want to have sex?

That is what is wrong with cold people. Not that they have ice in their souls - we all have a bit of that - but that they insist every word and deed mirror that ice. They never learn the beauty or value of gesture. The emotional necessity. For them, it is all honesty before kindness, truth before art. Love is art, not truth. It's like painting scenery.

Writers have no real area of expertise. They are merely generalists with a highly inflamed sense of punctuation.

A short story is a love affair, a novel is a marriage. A short story is a photograph; a novel is a film.

But I believed in starting over. There was finally, I knew, only rupture and hurt and falling short between all persons, but, Shirley, the best revenge was to turn your life into a small gathering of miracles. If I could not be anchored and profound, I would try, at least, to be kind.

Things between us were dissolving like an ice cub in a glass: the smaller it got, the faster it disappeared.

They had, finally, the only thing anyone really wants in life: someone to hold your hand when you die.